Shaming your Employees is Not the Solution

Some managers like to take reprimands and shame employees in front of customers to show that the customers are always right. This creates uninspired workers that are afraid to speak up and that don’t want to take the extra mile for the customers or you. They will be affecting the bottom line because the little things that make the customer happy won’t happen again because “no matter what I do, he does not appreciate it”.

By shaming your employee in front of the customer because the employee made a mistake, you might be satisfying the ego of one customer that was affected by this mistake. However, you will ruin the experience of all the customers after that because this employee and his coworkers won’t take the extra mile to provide a good experience. They won’t be happy and also will talk about you and the culture of the company in a way that will never encourage great people to apply to the company. In addition, if other customers saw the event, they might also have a bad impression of the company and never come back.

Employees that are afraid will never speak up, continue looking for other jobs, and will never be loyal to you as a boss. Loyalty goes both ways and if you don’t have your employee’s back, he/she won’t have yours either. Thus, the employee that was ashamed of the manager will never work late to help you to reach the goals or get you out of trouble. The manager will never be welcome by the team as a team member even in formality “he is part of the team”.

Teylor Feliz
Teylor Feliz

Teylor is a seasoned generalist that enjoys learning new things. He has over 20 years of experience wearing different hats that include software engineer, UX designer, full-stack developer, web designer, data analyst, database administrator, and others. He is the founder of Haketi, a small firm that provides services in design, development, and consulting.

Over the last ten years, he has taught hundreds of students at an undergraduate and graduate levels. He loves teaching and mentoring new designers and developers to navigate the rapid changing field of UX design and engineering.

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